10 Creative Ideas To Turn Cheap Grocery-Store Bedding Plants Into Unique Garden Centerpieces

Grocery stores are stacked with bargain bedding plants right now. From petunias to geraniums, lobelia to busy Lizzies, these fast-growing annual plants are destined to brighten up hanging baskets and borders. And in gardens up and down the country, that’s where most of these little lovelies will spend the summer, the supporting cast in a garden of bigger, showier perennials. But with a little imagination, you can take advantage of bedding plants' easy-going nature and give them a moment in the limelight with a unique garden highlight that will delight for months to come.

Few plants are as tolerant as annual bedding plants. Bred to cope with life in the exposed environment of a hanging basket, and to carry on flowering even when everyone forgets to water, they’ll happily survive in all sorts of weird and wonderful containers. They don’t require deep soil – or even much soil at all – and don’t mind a jot about seriously good drainage. All this makes them very versatile to use in creative DIY garden projects.

Another benefit is their low cost: often sold in multi-cell plastic trays, you can often buy a dozen plants for less than the price of a coffee.

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Most varieties have been grown to flower continuously and, as long as you keep deadheading, bloom to the first frost. This means they’ll produce far more flowers over the summer than most perennials, making for a dramatic display. And then yes, you’ll need to throw these annual plants onto the compost heap, but guess what? That means you can create a whole new garden centerpiece next summer! Which of these easy ideas will you try? As quick and clever planter ideas go, they're all winners!

1. Use a Basket as a Planter

This is such a simple, quick-to-do idea, yet it looks so stylish. Choose a bedding plant that loves the combination of sun or shade you have. One with spilling stems, such as this petunia, works well. Line your basket with sturdy plastic – an old potting-soil bag is perfect – and fill with an all-purpose potting mix such as this from Amazon. Add your bedding plants, water well, and enjoy!

2. Grow a Living Flower Wall

Many bedding plants grown to grace hanging baskets have trailing stems so they’ll quickly cover up the mechanics of a living wall to create a fabulously abundant flower wall. You’ll need plenty of plants, so stick with those at the cheaper end of the market, such as the aubretia and petunias in this fabulous living wall. The wall itself doesn’t have to be expensive, either, as you can use vertical felt grow bags with multiple pockets, such as this from Amazon, that are well priced and come in many different sizes. These wall planters typically have reinforced grommets, making them easy to attach to a fence or wall.

You’ll need plants that like good drainage for the top rows, though those in the lower rows will benefit from water dripping down from above.

3. Plant Cups and Mugs as Patio Table Accents

Here’s a quick upcycling project I completed just last weekend, using a couple of teacups and saucers that had sat in my kitchen cupboards, unused and unloved, for years. The idea would work just as well with mugs, too, and bring a cute interior vibe to a patio coffee table.

To drill a drainage hole in the base of a china or porcelain cup or mug, you’ll need a small dry diamond drill tile bit like this from Amazon. Support both sides of the surface with good-quality masking tape, and let the drill do all the work. If you want to see how I did it, here’s a closer look.

4. Make a Hot Air Balloon Planter

Here’s a clever idea that’ll work with any bedding plant that loves good drainage like these pretty geraniums (pelargoniums), and it’s such a cute way to decorate a pergola for a party.

Cover a blown-up balloon with papier mache (layers of torn newspaper mixed with wallpaper paste) and leave to fully dry. Use outdoor acrylic paint to decorate – a kit such as this from Amazon gives you multiple color options, or you can buy individual colors. If you want to leave your hot air balloon outdoors all summer, you’ll also need to protect it with a few coats of a multisurface exterior waterproofing sealer spray like this from The Home Depot, or hang it in a covered area.

Pop your plant into a pot with potting soil and use twine to fashion a holder, attached to your balloon.

5. Create a Cascading Flower Tower

How fabulous is this? And it’s quick and easy to create with stackable planters. Originally designed to grow strawberries, the great thing about stackable planters is that each tier is a single shaped pot. That means there’s a good volume of soil so it holds onto moisture for longer, reducing how often you need to water.

There are plenty to choose from, such as this five-tier planter with 20 planting pockets from The Home Depot. There are also stackable planters on wheels such as this from Amazon, to create a flower tower you can move around your deck or patio.

Annual plants that naturally grow into a mounded shape as well as have spilling stems – which many flowering hanging basket plants do – are perfect for this project, as they’ll quickly cover the planters.

6. Wrap a Plant Into a Mossy Kokedama

Kokedama is a Japanese gardening technique that wraps a plant’s root system in a ball of soil, enclosed in moss and bound with string. This ancient art practised for centuries usually uses ferns, but I’ve found it works really well with bedding plants, too.

I’ve made kokedama with pansies and violets, and currently have this little cutie hanging in the shade of my summerhouse. I used wire to bind the ball of soil and moss for strength, and it was surprisingly simple to do. They've lasted so well, too: I made these in November and they're still flowering away six months later! Take a closer look how I did it here.

7. Upcycle Old Gardening Equipment

If your shed is anything like mine, it has a corner filled with gardening equipment that’s no longer used. So how about upcycling any old kit that offers a planting pocket into a characterful container? These old watering cans create a fabulous trio of hanging planters and, as well as looking good, upcycling means you get to keep that trusty old gardening kit rather than consigning it to landfill!

Whatever you use, just be sure to drill drainage holes in the base.

Get Lush Results

Any plants in a container are reliant on you for food and water, and while bedding plants will tolerate pretty extreme conditions, keeping them consistently fed with nutrients and moisture will bring more abundant flowers. Adding a few magic ingredients to make containers low-maintenance is also a smart move.

8. Top Bamboo Poles With Drought-Tolerant Plants

I spotted this clever idea at a flower show earlier this year, where a line of planted bamboo posts had been sunk into the ground to create a screen. This idea would work just as well with plastic pipe bought from a hardware store, especially if you choose a diameter that perfectly holds whatever plastic plant pots you already have.

Rust-Oleum Universal Interior/Exterior Spray Paint transforms just about anything into an object of beauty, and adheres to most surfaces including plastic. Lowe’s has a great range, with many effects such as this bronze hammered finish that would make cheap pipes look like far more expensive metal.

While these poles are planted with succulents, any bedding plant that’s drought-tolerant would work in this elevated spot, such as geraniums (pelargoniums) or moss rose.

9. DIY a Vertical Pot Display

If you’ve got a stash of old terracotta pots, then here’s a super way to use them to create a vertical display spilling with bedding plants. You’ll need a steel rod, and the cheapest way is to buy one that’s meant for strengthening concrete and masonry from a hardware store, such as this 5’ Steel Works Rebar from Ace Hardware. Do check that its diameter will fit through the drainage holes of whatever pots you have, though terracotta is soft enough to easily drill with a masonry bit.

Start by pushing the rod into the ground by at least a foot, then thread on the pots, feeding the drainage holes over the rod. Arrange the pots to sit at different angles so the base of one rests securely on the rim of that beneath it. Then simply fill with potting soil and plants, and water well.

Because of the angled pots, trailing plants look particularly dramatic in this vertical display idea.

10. Have Plants Spill From a Fallen-Over Pot

This is a great way to use a broken terracotta pot, and it looks so effective on both a small and large scale. I’ve seen this idea used with petunias spilling from 10-inch pots in a small urban gravel garden to huge terracotta amphora cascading with lobelia in the landscaped grounds of a grand country house.

It’s easy to do. Simply scrape a shallow depression in the ground, as the pot looks more natural if it’s a little sunken. Lay your pot on its side and firm the soil around it. Add some potting mix inside the pot and pop your plant in. If you like, you can plant more into the ground, to accentuate the spilling effect.